diversity vs mediocrity

The lady made a simple, friendly suggestion, and The Mom burst out laughing! See if you wouldn’t:

Rej is going out for wings & beer with his trainees tomorrow night;

his IBM Retirement Dinner is Thursday at noon;

someone else’s Retirement bbq is Thursday evening;

Rej’s department is taking him out for lunch on Friday;

friends are having a bbq for him on Friday evening;

at the Elders’ bbq last night, someone said, "We’d like to have you over for a bbq sometime…"

Wouldn’t you have laughed? (At least she recovered and said "that’s very nice of you"!) Today is the ONLY day this week (besides Saturday and Sunday, actually), that is sort of "normal". ‘Course, when Rej retires on July 1st, what will normal even look like?

Mind you, lots of people have similar schedules at this time of year–all the end-of-season celebrations.

Lets see if we can do up some very brief sermon notes, although we always find that Craig’s sermons are quite wonderful.

This was the last of our series on our values, being the letter ‘D’, in SHEPHERD: "Diversity". Craig showed us how at the Tower of Babel people were scattered and didn’t understand each other’s language, but the story ends in glory: in Revelations 21 the nations bring their glory together, in Jerusalem to worship God. In between that, Craig highlighted Ephesians 3/4, where Paul speaks about the diversity of gifts that God has given us, and how we’re also supposed to be united. You see, at the Tower of Babel people had the wrong motives–pride, and fear of being attacked/separated–and when people make uniformity = unity, they are being also employ fear: everyone is exactly the same, and are afraid of anyone different, because of "fear of the unknown". After all, God has made such an infinite number of variations in nature: in animals, plant life, etc., and also in man.

So Craig listed several areas where we can practise diversity in our church (without elaborating): ethnicity, gender (both men & women should get involved), generations (who wants to be with only people your own age, all the time? Senior citizens have a lot to offer, as do children–and we’re actually fairly good at recognizing that), economics, abilities and challenges (physical, emotional, psychological), sexuality, vocation, religion and denomination (for example, practising varied liturgical traditions, which we do).